Tulane football Coach Curtis Johnson’s greatest asset might be his ability to fashion a dream out of a nightmare.

When he took the position in December 2011, Johnson was fresh off a six-year stint as the New Orleans Saints wide receivers coach. There he helped head coach Sean Payton turn a NFL franchise in the midst of a Hurricane Katrina-ravaged city into Super Bowl winners in four years.

But this Tulane football program is Johnson's next rebuild job. Johnson hopes to open that chapter on Thursday with a season debut at 7 p.m. against Jackson State in the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.

“It’s a faceless opponent for us,” Johnson said. “The psychology of it all is we’ve lost so much for so long, and I’m a part of it – I’m a part of the losing – and it’s time for us to take a step in a positive direction. We’ve been through a hard training camp. We had a hard spring ball. The off-season program was hard. It’s time for us to get a reward and the only reward is to win the first one. Then the next week we’ll win the second one and just keep going. It’s one at a time. Everything that we’ve got is in Jackson State.”

There were plenty of nightmares in year one. Last summer, his star linebacker got arrested for armed burglary. His projected starting center went down with a season-ended shoulder injury.

And all that was before camp started.

After camp, his top running back (Orleans Darkwa) hobbled through the season with a high ankle strain. His veteran quarterback (Ryan Griffin) went out of the Sept. 8 Tulsa game with a serious shoulder injury and his starting safety (Devon Walker), who had led the team a week prior in tackles, broke his neck.

Devon Walker is still fighting for movement today, rehabilitating the spinal cord injury that rocked his team, the city, and the college football nation.

Fast forward to now. Johnson said all those pieces of adversity-- some one-in-100 year storm style challenges-- have melded this program into one that can adjust to anything thrown its way.

“In life, you separate your adversities and you just have to kind of keep moving,” Johnson said. “What we have to do is when bad things happen – and bad things will, they’ll happen in the first game, they’ll happen in my life, they’ll happen in your life – we’ve got to learn that we have to put those things aside and continue to keep things going and continue to get back to as normal as we can. I think we’ve all learned a valuable lesson from those experiences.”

Without question, Devon Walker will be a beacon for the program as the Green Wave moves forward. Walker will be at Thursday’s game and is enrolled in fall semester classes.

“If you look at this young man and went through what he’s gone through. Every time you see him, every time he’s up here – he was up here last week at the rookie show (a fall football camp tradition)– I just sat and watched him most of the time and he was all smiles,” Johnson said. “He was just all smiles. He’s around the guys, he’ll joke about me and joke about them. He’s an inspiration to me and everyone else.”

But the underlying adaptability the players learned from last season – how to play through physical and emotional pain, confusion, and turmoil—are intangible challenges no other college football coach in the nation could duplicate.

In other words, no team in the nation had to deal with what Tulane did last season.

Darion Monroe, starting free safety, had to play through fatigue last season. He almost never came off the field. Walker’s injury not only shocked the team emotionally, it also left a thin position even thinner in his absence.

Monroe’s family’s home and his high school, East St. John, were flooded with Hurricane Isaac waters last fall as well. His car was lost in the storm.

Cornerback Derrick Strozier and others learned how to go on playing football when their minds were consumed with Walker’s health and his initial inability to communicate with his teammates.

Quarterback Devin Powell found out what it was like to get thrown in the middle of a game when the veteran starting quarterback went down moments earlier and then how to play a second half after a teammate had CPR performed on him during halftime and suffered paralysis afterward (Walker).

Thursday night, everything learned from last season will be banked and the opportunity to move the program forward exists.

“That’s what football is really all about is to be able to adapt and adjust and it’s not always going to go perfect, if something bad happens, you have to be able to know handle it and move on and go on the next play,” Offensive coordinator Eric Price said. “CJ is always saying, ‘Next play, next play, next play.’”

What’s next is a SWAC opponent that played in the league’s championship game last season.

The main focus will be slowing Jackson State's main cog – veteran quarterback Clayton Moore.

“One thing about this quarterback that they have is he’s a dynamite player,” Johnson said. “He led them to the SWAC Championship game and they should have won it. He embodies what they do. He’s an option quarterback. He can pull it. He can run it. He extends plays. He’s a very, very good player. If we can get a handle on him and contain him, it heightens our chances of winning this game. He’s a little bit like a Donavan McNabb-type of guy who’s an athletic guy who all of a sudden will tuck it away and run with it. He’s a good football player.”

Tulane defensive tackle Chris Davenport said the team has drilled the zone read during camp and is ready for some assignment football. Davenport highlights a revamped defensive line that includes two transfers (one more, Jeremy Peeples, will join sometime next week) and tremendously upgraded play.

Freshman Nico Marley is slated to start at weakside linebacker – one of many young faces that should appear on defense for Tulane Thursday.

“We have to keep the guys focused and help them learn the playbook,” Davenport said of how the defense has worked to prepare for the scheme. “The more you learn and the more you get experience at it and the more reps you get, the better you become at playing the zone read.”

Davenport is delighted to see his name on the starting depth chart – something he never did when he played for LSU.

“The difference this year is this is my first start ever in college football so that’s a pretty exciting thing for me,” Davenport said. “I’m really up for the challenge. It is going to be a different crowd. The crowd plays a part in the game so we’re going to try to keep the crowd in it.”

Offensively, the team will be working against a run-prevent Jackson State defense.

“The more I have coached throughout the years, the first game you kind of have to prepare for anything,” Offensive coordinator Eric Price said. “I talked to the offense today, I said, just because they did what they did that last year doesn’t mean they will do it this year. So we’ve been trying to be ready for anything.”

This club, it seems, experienced about everything last year --- and plans on winning more games this time around.

“If I coach them any harder, I think they’ll probably kill me or quit because I’m all over them,” Johnson said. “The difference between this year and last year is the expectation is so much higher. My expectation for them is so much higher. I expect to be in every game and I expect to win a bunch of them. That’s my expectation and I think this team has the same expectation that I do. In coaching them harder, they understand that this is what it takes for us to win and that’s what we’re going to do. They’ve got to understand that if you’re not going to get the job done, we’re on with the next man.”